


The Fate of Auradon

by SilentMusiic



Series: The Heart of Villainy [4]
Category: Descendants (Disney Movies), IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Auradon Prep (Disney), Curses, Decay Incantation, Descendants Au, Established Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Established Bill Denbrough/Stanley Uris, Established Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Kingdom politics, Multi, Murder, Not-So-Bad Villains, Not-So-Good Heroes, Royalty, Severe Depression, Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Thoughts, Swearing, The Isle of the Lost, Time Skips, United States of Auradon (Disney), VKs | Villain Kids (Disney), Violence, alternate universe - descendants, incarceration, marriage proposals, reference child abuse, spells
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:13:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 19,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25433680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentMusiic/pseuds/SilentMusiic
Summary: When the plan to save Georgie goes horribly awry, the remaining Losers are left to pick up the pieces and find out what went so wrong.But with three of the VKs fighting them at every turn, will they ever get the answers they need to bring back the people they love?And will any of them make it out of this alive?•Or, the final installment of the Descendants/IT AU that no one asked for(Follows Villains Never Change, Frozen Heart, and The Price of Family)
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon/Stanley Uris, Bill Denbrough/Stanley Uris, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Melody (Disney)/Original Female Character(s), Mike Hanlon/Stanley Uris, Myra Kaspbrak/Betty Ripsom
Series: The Heart of Villainy [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1703938
Comments: 25
Kudos: 34





	1. Chaos

**Author's Note:**

> Before you start the last part of this AU, I want to thank all of you for reading these fics and supporting my crazy idea to put these two fandoms together. 
> 
> And a big thank you to @RiseofEden, who has listened to every weird idea I had and has been listening to me talk about the same fic for eight months. Love you babes!
> 
> Without further ado, the ending of The Heart of Villainy

“Richard of The Isle, Prince of Former Corona, Prince Consort of Auradon, this council has ruled that, for your treasonous acts…” Melody seemed to hesitate, losing her practiced composure for a moment as she addressed Richie for the last time. Her cheeks were streaked with tears that had started with the trial, “upon Auradon and her people...you will serve life in prison, or until you are able to undo the horrid fate you have placed on E-” she clamped a hand over her mouth as a sob echoed through the throne room where Richie’s trial was taking place. 

Auradon wasn’t used to this, they had no formal chambers for court proceedings, and it wasn’t as if Richie were fighting his sentence, he knew what he did, why he was here. He deserved whatever Queen Melody wanted to place upon him. He had openly admitted this belief several times, so rearranging an entire room for the sentencing seemed unnecessary to all involved. The Queen’s council sat high above in the loft seating that was typically reserved for lower ranking citizens during special occasions. Richie couldn’t help but think back to Eddie’s coronation when they first ushered him in, all eyes on his form, now free of its typical energy and life. 

The Royal Council was made of Melody’s closest advisors. Richie quickly picked out the faces of the daughters of Hercules, Esmerelda, and  Lumière as well as the sons of Tiana and Moana. He pretended not to be hurt by the fact that Myra also sat among the Council. These people who he knew well now, who had embraced him not two weeks ago, were now to decide whether he wither away in prison or face death far earlier than he believed he would. Yet, oddly enough, he was happy to not be in their shoes for this decision.

When Melody was unable to finish her sentence, Lumière’s daughter, Lux, stood and answered for her. She was the head of the council, and of course felt the obligation to speak when the Queen could not.

“You will serve your sentence either until death or until you are able to reverse the fate you have placed upon Auradon’s rightful heir,” Richie ducked his head at the words, the defining moment of the rest of his life playing over again in his mind, “And Richie,” he glanced up at Lux’s much softer tone, “we did what we could. I’m sorry. You still have the ability to plead cur-”

“No,” Richie interrupted, a reserved expression falling over his features, an expression no one had seen from him since he first arrived on the Isle, “I deserve the sentence I have been given. My previous request stands.” 

Lux and Melody glanced at each other, then back to Richie, giving him twin nods before Melody waved her hand for the Royal Guard to escort Richie to his new home; the sole prison cell in Auradon’s castle. Their grip on his arms was far too tight, but he supposed it was the small amount of aggression that they could bear to place on their former prince consort. Richie tried to let the long trip to the prison pass as quickly as possible, but the guards specifically chose to lead him past the garden that he couldn’t bear to look at and the storage room that had been frozen over to house yet another example of his weakness and inability to protect those he loved. One last “fuck you” to the boy who would go down in Auradonian history as six words.

‘Richard Tozier, Villain & Murderer, Deceased’

That last descriptor was sounding more and more tempting by the minute.

**One Week Earlier**

“Well what the fuck are we gonna do about  _ that?! _ ” Stan asked sharply as the remainder of the Losers gathered together within the castle of Auradon Prep. He looked to everyone who was still here, Eddie, Ben, Mike, Myra, Betty, Georgie and himself. All of their clothes were ripped or torn in some way, caught in sharp stones or broken planks as they had scrambled away from the Isle with three less than they anticipated. Eddie, Ben, and Georgie seemed to be in a state of shock, and it took a lot for Stan to admit that he would be too if he hadn’t had to get them the hell out of the Isle while they still could.

The look in their eyes...it was inhuman.

Richie was down for about five minutes, and in that time, Greta’s gang didn’t move an inch. In fact, they only  _ started _ moving when Richie started to stand up. Greta’s terrifying smile rose again, and she nodded to Henry and Patrick, who took Eddie’s binds off of him and sent him down the dock, with Mike, Myra, and Betty quickly following. All of them were wholly confused. That is, until Richie stumbled over to the group and grabbed onto Beverly and Bill’s wrists with a bruising grip.

It was like the glow was contagious, as if it could have spread to anyone and yet, it chose them specifically. The people who came to after their eyes stopped glowing were the farthest things possible from the Richie, Bill, and Bev that they had come to know and love.

Bev came to with tears in her now entirely bright orange eyes and streaming down her cheeks, the orange seeming to bleed into the tears as they rolled down her pale skin. Her hair was completely lit and seemed impervious to the wind that was whipping around them.

Bill’s face was contorted in anger, his eyes glowing deep emerald green as he glanced around to eye up the rest of the group.

Richie had a twisted smirk on his lips while the golden glow of his eyes seemed to be brighter than ever. Golden sparks shot out from his fingertips where his hands hung at his sides. 

The trio didn’t seem to be fully aware just yet, but when their joint attention snapped to the group, the remaining Losers seemed to take the hint that they had to leave as soon as possible. 

When triplet attacks of fire, water, and electricity attempted to follow them, but halted drastically where the barrier started, they all knew that whatever had just happened was entirely, terrifyingly real.

Eddie had apparently started sobbing at some point, with Ben holding him close and rubbing circles into his back. They barely had a moment to understand what had happened, and yet here they were, back on the sands of Auradon. 

“How long do you think we have before they break through the barrier?” Mike asked solemnly, unable to meet any of their eyes. He hadn’t said a word since Richie’s eyes started glowing again at the fight.

“Not long. It only took a little bit of your ice and your potion to break the barrier. With all three of them combined? I doubt they’ll be in there in the morning.” Myra answered succinctly, staring at Stan’s boat that was now slowly melting into the divide. 

The group sat together on Auradon’s shore, staring off at the Isle as pillars of powers struck the barrier to no avail. Eddie let out a choked sob, but steadily reached up to wipe at his eyes and put on his self-named “King Face”. “I...I have to meet with my advisors. Mike, Stan, try to figure out what’s happening. Ben, come with me, I’ll need a witness for what we’ve seen. Myra, send for Melody, she’ll listen to you since you’re on her advisory board. We’ll figure this out, and we’ll...we’ll get them back.” He said the last sentence as if it were a question, not a statement, and the group split up. Stan watched as everyone left to do what Eddie had instructed, save for him and Mike. Mike, whose hands were trembling and whose eyes were glossed over with unshed tears.

“Whoa, whoa, Mike, what’s wrong? Look I know this all seems...bleak, but I promise, we’ll figure this out,” Stan reached down to take one of Mike’s hands in his own, lacing their fingers together and gently squeezing his hand, “we’ll get Bill back, everything will be okay.”

“It’s all my fault.”

That stunned Stan. How could he so easily say that this was his fault? How  _ could _ it be his fault? How could anything in this world ever make him feel as if he had done anything wrong ever? What had driven this perfect boy to having the world on his shoulders? Stan only wished he could voice as much. Instead he mutters a soft “how?”

“My mother does that. My mother controls peoples’ thoughts and actions and makes them  _ believe  _ what she says. She could rewrite your entire memory and convince you to let her do it. She hops between people like a virus, she  _ told  _ Richie to take Bill and Bev, too, she’s been plotting this, Greta must have been in on it, was using her to rile him up so he’d lose control and slip,  _ she knew!” _ Mike had curled into a ball and was curling his hands in his hair, pulling on it as if doing so would pull Yzma from his mind. Stan stooped down, kneeling in front of Mike and gently moving his hands away from his hair, then wiping the streaming tears off of his cheeks. 

“Even if what you say is true, if your mother  _ did _ do this, it’s still not your fault that it happened. It’s hers. She tore us all apart, she hurt us, but we’ll be stronger than her, we’ll defeat her and when we do,” he held Mike’s face in one hand, smiling at him with all the strength and courage he could muster. Because right now he had to be strong, because Mike needed his strength, needed Stan to be able to hold onto.

If they had any hope of getting their Richie, Bev, and Bill back, it rested in Mike’s hands.


	2. Plans

Stan and Mike found themselves holed up in Auradon’s library as it seemed to be the only place Mike could think. They had left Georgie- who had been in a similar state of shock, confusion, and denial to Eddie and Ben- in the dorm that Mike and Bill shared, and locked the door on the way out so that he wouldn’t go anywhere. As if he’d even wanted to, he was infatuated with the tech and decor of the dorm, especially the large, plush beds that he’d almost immediately gravitated towards. Stan figured he would probably be asleep on one of them by now. The Isle didn’t seem one for feather pillows and pillow-top mattresses. 

Ben had texted them when they first arrived to say that Eddie was preparing Auradon’s defense system, but they knew that if their friends could succeed in breaking through the magical barrier around the Isle, no physical barrier would be any sort of threat to them. It wasn’t like any of them were gonna tell Eddie that, though. 

Mike was sitting at one of the long tables, notebooks scattered around him with all sorts of scribbled notations and thought processes gracing the pages. He hadn’t stopped since they had gotten to the library, and Stan wasn’t about to stop him.

This was how Mike processed the storm of thoughts that raged on in his mind, how he kept the guilt at bay, how he kept himself from carrying the blame on his back. 

“My mother...she’s powerful, but not powerful enough to cast a curse without a loophole, a cure, something. It’s in here somewhere, it’s in the way that they  _ acted _ how they  _ looked _ , I just have to figure it,” he paused for a moment as his attention focused on the quick sketches he had made of their friends’ glowing eyes and expressions. Mike reached over and pulled the stray paper closer, hids gaze flickering between the faces of Richie, Bill, and Beverly several times before he looked up again, turning to face Stan.

“I know what she did, I’ve seen her use this curse before. It’s-It’s not like any of her other curses but she...she changed it, it wasn’t able to  _ infect  _ like it did with Bev and Bill. The core curse,” he stood from the table and grabbed his main notebook, taking a few stray pages with him as he made his way over to Stan, “the core curse  _ rewrites _ memories to become the way she wants them. She had to have made specific curses for all of them and then  _ rewritten _ the way the curse behaves in order to make it infectious. But-But not even infectious to just anyone, it was only for them, she wanted to use Richie to spread it to them,” Mike seemed to start going manic at this point, connecting dots everywhere to put together some semblance of an idea of what Yzma had done, “but why?  _ Why?  _ What does she want?  _ What does she- _ ”

He stopped. His hands were shaking again, and Stan quickly swept them up in his own, surprised when Mike didn’t pull them away. “Mike, it’s okay, just...just say what you think she wants.” 

Mike looked up at Stan with a watery smile and unshed tears in his eyes, seeming to choke on the words that he so desperately wanted to say, “This. She wants this. She wants me to go crazy and wants to make the VKs suffer. She wants me to be...to be  _ afraid  _ of them so that I’ll come running back to her. And she…” he let out a weak laugh that lacked all mirth, “she almost succeeded...no, no I won’t fear them, I won’t fear my own friends.” Mike pulled away from Stan’s hold and moved over to his table, grabbing his notes and setting them down again in front of him. He cast a vague glance over his sketches once more, then flipped to an open page and began writing again, “she was able to amplify parts of their lives and change others. It takes her a year at least to create one of these curses she’s been...she’s been working on these for  _ years _ .” Mike reached up to card his fingers through his cropped hair, pulling the pages of the notebook together even as he wrote.

“She amplified Bill’s anger, made his trauma more powerful and more...painful. She erased his love. So he was angry, and unstable, like...like fire. She brought Bev’s depression to the surface, it’s why she was crying, it’s likely...that she turned Bev’s memories of Iracebeth encouraging her, loving her, into beratements and criticism. Tears, water, it lines up. And Richie...Richie he was…” Mike seemed to calm down from his small period of mania, losing his train of thought, “I...I don’t know. I’m sorry, I lost it...I can’t-”   
  
“Hey, hey,” Stan rushed over to Mike’s side, steadying him and easing him into his chair, “it’s okay, Mike. The fact that we’ve gotten this far is  _ incredible _ and it’s all thanks to you.” He took a moment to let Mike start to calm down, then let out a sigh as he realized there was still one question that they needed to answer, “Is there...any way that you know of that we can...stop them? Help them go back to normal?”

Mike looked up, staring off into the distance at nothing as he puzzled through the whirlwind of knowledge he had on his mother’s memory curses. After a few, tense moments, he sighed, laying his head on the table in front of him. He looked so  _ young _ in this instance, and it was then that Stan realized the true weight of what was happening to them. At seventeen, Mike was being forced to fight against his first and only friends, the only other people who understood the trials and tribulations of being a VK in Auradon. Not only that, but his own  _ mother _ was the one who had caused his friends so much pain. Now he was the only one who knew what to do and how to stop her. It had to be a horrible burden to bear, and if they weren’t as short on time as their situation forced them to be, Stan would ensure Mike had time to rest after such an intense manic episode. It hurt him to ask that Mike divulge more than he already had, but they had no choice.

“Her...Her curses are weakened when surrounded by light magic. Dark magic fuels them...which means…” Mike’s hand curled up on his notebook, the blank page catching under his fingers and wrinkling up, tearing from the spiral binding, “Stan...they can’t stay on the Isle.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“We have to bring them here. There’s too much dark energy on the Isle, they need to be somewhere...light. It’s the only way we can figure out what my mother said to them, the only way we can get even a sliver of their original consciousness to talk to us.” Mike was shaking his head through the entire thought, as if he were willing it not to be true as he whispered it into the room. He turned to face Stan with a newfound determination in his eyes, “Stan, if we can...if we can manage to surround them with light magic, we should be able to talk to them as they were before Yzma altered their memories. My mother, she is a  _ master _ manipulator, her magic only makes that manipulation more powerful. She has to  _ talk to them _ to be able to curse them.”

“So...not only do we have to  _ let them _ into Auradon, we have to get close enough to surround them with magic?” 

Mike shook his head to Stan’s questions, his eyes were welling with tears again as he let out a short laugh that was more like a quick exhalation through his nose. “There’s no “we” about it, Stan. It...It has to be  _ you _ . You’re the only one of us that can freely wield magic without it coming from a secondary source. My potions can’t do what your ice can.” Mike felt the temperature in the room seem to drop ten degrees in a single second. 

“ _ Oh, fuck me.” _

*****

It was so hot here.

Fire.

All he could feel was fire. Anger.

It hurt more than anything. It burnt his hands even though he was supposed to be controlling it.

He spent the last year getting used to the cold.

He was burning.

And longing for Frost.

Where was Frost?

Where was he?

It was dark here.

The fire hurt his hands.

It hurt-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed!
> 
> As always, feel free to message me on Insta, I post lots of Reddie and even some hints as to what's coming next for this AU! @silentmusiic


	3. Ice

“You want me to do  _ what?! _ ”

Mike and Stan shared a resigned glance before Mike moved to place his notebook, the removed pages hastily shoved back in their places between the covers, on the long table in front of them. 

The pair had crafted their plan for Richie, Bill, and Bev quickly, making a mad dash for the chamber in which Eddie’s strategic council was meeting with him about the new impending threats. They had gotten through a good bit of the logistics of Yzma’s curses and what had happened to their friends, what the memory curses meant for the people that they once knew. He had mostly understood, as much as he could at least. Dark magic was rarely discussed on the Isle, so this topic was hardly Eddie’s forte. However, the moment that they mentioned having to lower Auradon’s defenses…

“Absolutely  _ not! _ Guys, you know I trust your judgement, but this...this will  _ kill  _ the kingdom. I can’t just  _ allow  _ three…” he hesitated on the word that plagued all of the Losers’ minds now, knowing what it would mean to give into saying it, to saying it in regards to the people they loved, “three  _ villains _ into Auradon. Not when they’re truly...evil,” Eddie cast his eyes to the ground, shaking his head at the thought. 

“Eddie, they won’t get into Auradon,” Stan interrupted, stepping forward to flip to the notebook page where they had diagramed their plan. He pointed to each figure they had drawn up as he explained, “not completely, at least. The three of them will bust through the Isle barrier by sunrise, and it will close behind them like it did for us. If we meet them at the divide, I can,” Stan took a deep breath as he looked over to Eddie, “I can trap them in an ice sphere.”

Mike took a step forward, coming up on Stan’s left and turning his attention to Eddie, whose expression was so crinkled it seemed as though it would give him wrinkles by the time this meeting was over, “If we can get them in a place that radiates  _ goodness _ and quite literally surround them with Stan’s light magic, we should be able to talk to them, break through the curse, figure out how to stop this.” Eddie still looked unconvinced, staring off, away from the notebook to the defense plans that his council had drawn up, “It’s our only hope of getting them back, Eddie.”

His gaze didn’t waver, stuck on the plans that must have been more intriguing than their own. Just as Mike opened his mouth to make another point in their favor, Eddie spoke again. “We will go through with the defense plan. Push it inland by five feet,” He looked between Stan and Mike with a hardened expression neither of them had seen on him before, “I love Richie, but I have a duty to protect my kingdom. You have one shot. After that,” he started towards the door, stopping only when his hand wrapped around the handle, finishing his sentence with a look to Mike that radiated resigned sadness, “we won’t hesitate to wage war.” 

*****

The Auradonian Royal Guard finished setting up their defenses at 2 AM, which included outfitting Stan and Mike with armor that was usually reserved for full-on war. Eddie told them that he was going to do whatever he could to ensure their safety and the safety of Auradon. Apparently that included armor that weighed heavier on them than the pressure of the situation. 

“Are you ready, Stan?” Mike asked softly, keeping his voice low as to not show his concern to the Auradonian Guard that had set up only a few feet behind him. As far as they knew, the two teenagers before them were completely assured in their abilities to do as they had said, to keep the dark magic threatening their kingdom contained. Yet the terrible truth was that Stan and Mike were operating on theory alone. According to the history of story, nothing like this had ever occurred before, not that they believed it had. However it seemed as though there hadn’t been a threat to Auradon’s safety ever in the time since the Isle’s creation. Go figure. Stan resisted making a comment about the VKs and making history. 

“I don’t know. But I want to try, I…I want my friends back. I’m not going to just stand by and let Georgie lose his big brother when he just got him back.”

The pair seemed to have quite a good- or possibly just extremely lucky- sense of timing, as the sound of a terrible explosion shook through the kingdom. The barrier that surrounded the Isle, which had held back an entire population for almost two decades, was broken by the magic it was created with. 

The opening the trio’s synthetic elemental magic created was jagged and awkward, made through violent, frantic attempts at breaking the barrier. As part of the plan Mike and Stan had created, the usual stone bridge that was meant for travel across the divide was replaced with a bridge of ice made with Stan’s own magic to ensure that their friends would be entirely surrounded with light magic, and the stone of the bridge wouldn’t interfere with their possible contact with their friends. 

Mike took a step back from Stan, letting the boy put up a shield of thick but clear ice in front of them as the three figures across the bridge began to approach them. Stan tried his best to push away the fact that the villains they were fighting were still Richie, Bev, and Bill at heart, and fought the way his mind recalled the story of aunt and parents’ first adventure. The true power of the magic in his veins. He repressed a shudder at the near fate of his own mother. 

The figures, almost silhouetted under the light of the moon, grew ever closer to the ice shield that separated them from Auradon. Stan drew in a deep breath, steeling himself for what he would have to do. He tried to move past the idea of trapping his friends in the ice that almost killed his mother, but the thought stuck in his mind.

Stan felt the ice building up at his fingertips as he willed the magic to start forming the ice crystals, a surge of confidence rushing through him as he charged towards the shells of who his friends used to be. His hands reached out in front of him, almost independent of his own will, and a thick sphere of ice wrapped itself around the trio. Stan heaved in wavering breaths, never having had to uphold so many structures dependent on his magic before. Subconsciously, he let the small shield fall, and heard the soft sound of Mike’s approaching footsteps as he did so. 

Inside the sphere, not a single one of the trio had said a word or moved even the slightest bit. 

“Are...Are they?” Stan asked softly, keeping his hands clasped into fists to maintain the multiple feats of ice that he was holding up. He couldn’t look anywhere besides the sphere, the unmoving, uncaring expressions that all three of the VKs trapped inside wore.

“No...No I don’t think so. All the journals on Elsa’s powers show that people can exist inside of her creations unharmed. I think…” Mike’s expression lit up as he looked back over to Stan, “I think it’s working! The magic is getting through to them!” And it actually looked like it was. The glow of their now unnaturally-colored eyes was starting to dim, flicker into the browns and greens and blues they knew and loved...until it stopped. Richie and Beverly’s eyes gave one last flicker, then returned to their blinding yellow and orange settling into a glossy version of their colors. Bill’s color, however, faded away entirely, leaving simple, relieving light green eyes. Eyes that Stan and Mike had never been so happy to see.

Bill let out a soft grunt, starting to shift forward towards the pair despite being inside the sphere. When his gaze lifted ever so slightly to meet Stan’s, a wide smile bloomed on his face, and his eyes started to glaze with tears. “Frost! Mike! You’re- I’m...I-I’m in i-ice?” He took a moment to glance around, balking slightly at Beverly and Richie, before turning to face the other two again. The tears that had formed before were now rolling freely down his cheeks. “Y-Yzma...she...s-spoke to us...t-t-told us it w-was easier as v-v-v-villains…” 

Mike stepped forward, trying to get Bill’s attention. He needed to ask as many questions as he could before...something happened. “Bill, hey, buddy, do you know anything, absolutely  _ anything _ about how to help your guys? What do we need to do?” Bill’s eyes were frantic, likely due to the effects of the magic coursing through him now beginning to settle. Mike took note of the way he kept flexing his fingers, starting to curl them in before shooting them back out as if doing so hurt.

“She...she m-messed with our h-h-heads. Changed our m-memories. M-Made us b-b-believe…” Bill seemed to get lost in the moment, shaking his head to bring himself back to reality, “There’s...a w-way out of it. B-B-But it’s...y-you’re...not gonna l-like it.” Stan and Mike shared a glance, but Bill’s attention focused squarely on Stan, his expression full of something almost like pity. “It’s d-d-different for all of us b-but...I think she w-wants to hurt us...sh-she doesn’t like that we “t-t-took” Mike from h-her...Yzma gave us w-ways out that we’d rather d-d-die than take…”

“Bill...love, what do we have to do?”

“Sh-She knows I’ve b-b-been h-hurt by the ones I l-l-love my whole l-life...Stan...Frost, you h-have t-t-to…” he seemed to choke on the final few words, as if they hurt more than his hands apparently did, “you have to f-f-freeze my h-heart.” And all the blood drained from Stan’s face.

Mike felt the bridge shift slightly under their feet, immediately grabbing onto Stan’s arm. Thankfully the action grounded the boy back into their situation, and as Stan shook his head, Mike watched the tears stream down his face. “I can’t! I can’t do it, I  _ won’t _ ! You know how I feel about my magic, it almost killed my mom, even my aunt couldn’t always control it! I’ll hurt you, I’ll...I’ll kill you!”

“Hey, hey, babe look at me.” Bill interrupted, pressing his hand against the ice. When Stan’s eyes finally met his, Bill tried to ignore the way his heart ached at the sight of the boy who had always been so strong breaking down as he was forced to go back on everything he had ever believed. “I trust you. And it’s like you said, love thaws.”

Stan nodded, by Mike’s count, eight times before he raised his hand to press it against Bill’s, the two separated only by Stan’s ice. Slowly, as if he was unsure if it would work properly, Stan let a hole form in the ice where their hands met, and Bill let his hand fall back to his side.

“Frost? I love you.” Bill stepped forward, Stan’s palm now resting over his heart.

“I love you, too.”

Stan let the magic slip through his fingers and into Bill’s skin. He pretended not to be sick when he heard Bill’s pained gasp. 

And Stan only realized then that, when Bill was saying he trusted him, he hadn’t stuttered once.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter!
> 
> Feel free to message me on instagram at @silentmusiic !


	4. Memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! So sorry for the hiatus, I moved into college two weeks ago so I decided to take some time to get situated. Things are getting good in this chapter though! Hope you enjoy!

Mike kept a constant eye on Richie and Beverly. 

It had been easy enough, getting Richie and Beverly to a room that they could be kept in. The ice functioned as it was supposed to, and the two cursed VKs just...stayed. They didn’t move in the ice at all. Bill vaguely mentioned something about the ice ‘not being their way out’, but Mike tried not to think about it too much. They were on their way to getting their friends back, and Bill was the key.

Being able to let the bridge fall after they were off of it took a huge weight off of Stan’s shoulders. Literally. He was still keeping Richie and Beverly in what was now a giant, hollow ice cube, and even Mike could tell that Stan could feel the ice taking hold on Bill’s heart. Stan had immediately helped Bill to bed, deciding that they had enough time to let him rest before having to fully question him about exactly what the fuck was going on.

Mike startled at the sound of the storage-room-turned-freezer’s door creaking open. Eddie entered cautiously with Stan in tow. Oddly enough, Stan had a scarf draped over his shoulder, despite sharing his aunt’s affinity for the cold. Mike stole a glance at Eddie, who had apparently moved to where Richie was frozen, leaning his forehead against the ice and letting out a shaky sigh. 

Deciding to let the king have a moment alone, Mike stood from his chair, moving across the room to Stan and gently tugging his arm to guide him out of the room. He let the door shut quietly behind them, the drastic temperature shift causing a slight sweat to form on his brow. Stan pulled the scarf off of his shoulder and held it out to Mike, smiling sheepishly. 

“I brought this for you, thought you might need it in there,” There was a silence between the two as Mike took the scarf, smiling up at Stan. He opened his mouth to thank him but was met with a hand telling him not to, “Don’t thank me. I should be thanking you for keeping an eye on them. My magic is…” Stan’s expression seemed to fall slightly, “unstable. It needs a watchful eye and I...I trust you to keep it steady if something goes wrong.”

“Did you get anything from Bill?” Mike asked, wrapping the scarf around his neck once, just tight enough for it to stay on.

“Just a few little things. I’m not...I don’t know this stuff as well as you all do. I didn’t grow up with…” Stan hesitated, looking to Mike quickly as if asking for approval. He nodded, and Stan continued, “villains everywhere. I grew up...fuck, in a palace...I don’t know how you guys can do this.” Mike smiled, though it seemed almost painful to do so. 

“When most of the people around you have schemed for the demise of entire populations and you know that you don’t want that life, you learn how to stop them,” Mike answered succinctly, glancing up at Stan with a sad smile. When Stan seemed unconvinced, starting to turn away, Mike reached out for his wrist. “Hey...everything’s going to be alright. We’re going to win. This is just another battle that we have to fight.” 

“Mike...what happens if we don’t win? What do we do then?” The boy in question cast his eyes to the ground quickly, as if a moment of hesitation, then stared back at Stan with a newfound determination. 

“I’m not letting that happen.” 

*****

“What happened, Bill?” Mike whispered, trying not to cause his friend any more pain than he was already dealing with. Bill had been complaining of migraines ever since Stan had used his magic on him. Which, incidentally, may have something to do with the fact that Bill’s hair was now pure white. 

“Well my brain was definitely turned to soup when your mom was poking around in it, so we can start there if you want?” His tone was colder than the frozen room, and Mike let his shoulders curl inward at the implications Bill had set forth. At the sight of his reaction, though, Bill’s face softened and he breathed a sigh. Slowly, he reached out to take Mike’s hand in his own, “Hey, I’m sorry, what happened wasn’t your fault, I shouldn’t have acted like it was.”

“It’s okay, Bill, I get it. She did it because she thinks you guys took me from her, so yeah, it kind of is my fault.”

“Stop that, you couldn’t have seen it-  _ fuck!”  _ Bill reached up with the hand not currently entwined with Mike’s to rub at his temple.

“Bill, I don’t want to try to overwhelm you so soon after coming out of a memory curse, but the only way we’re getting out of this is if you tell me what she told you in there.” Mike squeezed Bill’s hand in an attempt at reassurance, but he couldn’t help but fret over the way that his skin felt colder already. 

Bill recounted every instant he could remember of being under the curse- with only short pauses for Bill to stop from hurting his head-, how he was there, but some other version of himself was the one acting, the one who couldn’t remember the feeling of Stan’s hand in his or the fact that the magic coming from his fingers wasn’t his own. He started talking about the burns, how bad his hands hurt under the flames, and how when he tried to stop, the other version of himself kept going. Mike felt tears start to well in his eyes, but paid it no mind, as he was racking his brain for a way to get around his mother’s curse with his own magic.

Then it came to him.

“You said... it seemed like it was another person making the decisions for you?” Mike asked, pulling away from Bill for the first time to grab his notebook and spellbook. He sat back on the bed, right at Bill’s feet, and started to flip through the pages.

“You have an idea, Mike?”

“If it truly was another version of you acting for you and not that your actual memories were altered, I should be able to pull that version that Yzma created from Bev and Richie’s minds, and they should be back to normal without having to break their curses.” Mike concluded, smiling down at an old duplication spell and its foil, “Bill, I can save them!” Then when Bill winced, “Oh, right, sorry.”

He got to work.

*****

“You’re sure this will work, Mike?” Eddie asked softly, his eyes never leaving the pair still trapped in the ice.

Eddie and Mike were the only two in the freezer room. Mike had met with Bill two hours earlier, and had been able to work up what he believed would finally free both of their friends who were still trapped in Yzma’s curse.

“Mike, I don’t want to put undo pressure on you, but you must understand that if this doesn’t work...we will have to wage war on the Isle to track down Yzma and bring her to justice. I know she is your mother bu-”

“That creature is not my mother. She hasn’t been for a long time. My family is upstairs freezing to death and in this block of ice. That’s my family. Never assume otherwise, your majesty.” Mike retorted, pressing town hands against the ice and splitting his focus as much as he could muster, he knew he would have to get both of his friends at the same time or either the other’s cursed self would be free or the one he freed would freeze. No, he had to do this right, and he only had one chance to do so. 

Mike’s electric blue and magenta magic rippled through the ice like water, spiralling around Richie and Bev. If he did this right, their memories would be back to normal and Stan’s ice would break around them. That was the plan, that was what needed to happen for all of this to be over.

Mike could see Bev and Richie in his mind, could feel the way he was peeling away all of the fake from their minds and leaving just them. Purely them. He was almost there...and then it was done. Mike opened his eyes and watched as both the ice and his friends crumpled to the floor. 

Eddie immediately rushed over to Richie while Mike sat beside Bev, who was taking a bit longer to open her eyes. He held his breath, waiting for any sort of sign that everything was okay again. 

“Eds?” 

Mike felt like the world was taken off his shoulders with one word.

“Chee!”

He cast his gaze to Bev as Richie and Eddie reunited, and a smile graced his expression as her eyes opened to look up at Mike. 

“Bev! I can’t believe it worked, you’re okay! You’re both okay!” Mike immediately wrapped his arms tight around her...but when she made no move to reciprocate and the room around them began to heat up, he pulled away.

What he saw before him broke his heart. Bev’s hair was aflame and her eyes stared at him with not an ounce of recognition in them.

“Who the fuck are you and where are we? Answers only or I burn this place to the ground.”

  
  



	5. Reunion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! I'm super excited about this chapter becauseeeeeeeeee
> 
> **spoiler alert**
> 
> YOU GET TO MEET YZMA!!!
> 
> And she's 100% played by Angela Bassett circa American Horror Story Seasons 3 & 8 iykyk

“What...What happened, Mike?” Ben asked softly, curled up, and held tight in Stan’s arms. The boy had been crying ever since Richie had to inform him of what had happened to Beverly. 

After calming her down, Eddie, Richie, and Mike came to the conclusion that Mike had unintentionally stripped Bev of most of her personal memories, including who any of her friends were and all the events that had happened since the VKs were brought to Auradon. Ben was crushed, to say the least.

Beverly had been moments from lashing out, but Mike had been able to seal her in the storage room and ensure it would be fireproof so that the six of them could discuss where to go from here. 

“I’m so sorry, Ben...I don’t know why it didn’t work on Bev the same way it worked on Richie...it really should have been the other way around if anything considering that Richie was the origin of the curse and it stemmed from him. It just...it doesn’t make sense.” Mike explained, trying to make himself as small as possible in the seat that he had taken beside Eddie, who was sitting at the table to draft their ideas. Eddie had told his advisors that this was a personal matter, not a political one and that it would be handled by them and them alone. 

“I don’t see any other way out besides sending her back to the Isle. That’s the only place she knows, she’ll...she’ll have to go back. We can’t force her to stay. She doesn’t know what it’s like here...all we’d be doing is making her suffer.” Richie suggested, and all eyes turned to focus on him. He hadn’t spoken since they had all realized just what happened to Beverly, and Mike wished what he was saying didn’t make sense. Beverly didn’t remember anything about them or where she was, and to keep her here would only be setting her up to fail. “We still have to track down Yzma, and our lives are here now. Bev is strong, hell she’s stronger than all of us, if anyone can go back there and live a good life, it’s her.”

The room went silent, but it was obvious that they had all come to the same conclusion. 

Bev would have to go back to the Isle.

Alone.

*****

Mike put a spell over Beverly to keep her calm that would break the moment she set foot in the magicless Isle of the Lost. 

The royal guard escorted Beverly across the divide.

Mike, Eddie, Richie, Stan, Bill, and Ben watched her get taken away. 

Ben’s tears flowed unencumbered down his cheeks. Bill shivered in Stan’s arms. Richie muffled sobs in Eddie’s shoulder. Mike felt their pain as a weight on his soul.

Beverly woke up on the Isle and recalled an odd dream she’d had of six boys and a deep-seated feeling in her heart that felt something like what she thought could have been love. 

*****

Ben decided to return to the bell tower instead of going with the other boys, and six became five. He mumbled something about ‘not being much use anyway’ before he left.

“We broke her curses, she has to have noticed. There’s no way that she hasn’t yet. If she’s in Auradon, she’ll strike at any minute.” Richie stated plainly, his voice devoid of the humor that used to light up the room in the absence of the person he trusted most in the world. Mike looked over to Richie and sighed, shaking his head.

“She loves to make a scene, you know that she’ll pick a dramatic entrance over one that has any sort of meaning behind it.” He argued, casting his gaze to the floor as he felt the room’s temperature shift down drastically. Without even having to look up, he noted, “Stan, you’re flurrying.” A soft ‘sorry’ came from across the room.

Just as the word left Stan’s lips, the doors to Eddie’s planning room balcony flung open, their attached curtains billowing in the sudden gust of wind. “Guess right now is dramatic enough,” Eddie muttered, reaching for his sword as a large plume of purple smoke moved into the room, and in its center, the silhouette of a tall woman.

“Mikey!” The woman called out in a singsong voice as the smoke cleared, one hand thrown up in an almost theatrical fashion while the other stayed propped on her hip. When she was fully visible, Mike got the first good look at his mother that he had gotten in seven years. 

They really did look alike. Mike remembered her hair when it was left natural and out of the protective style she was wearing now, the way it had framed her face like a halo of curls. He knew he would look just like her if he let his hair grow out to what hers had been. Now, her hair fell in perfect twists all the way to her waist, and the ends were dyed the kind of electric blue that Mike just knew she spelled onto her hair as opposed to actually dying it. Standing here, she almost looked the way he remembered. For a moment, Mike didn’t see the woman who cursed his best friends, he just saw his mom. But only for a moment.

“What do you want, Yzma?” Mike answered, steeling his expression as he faced her. She worked her face into a sort of pout at his response, though, and sighed.

“Now is that any way to treat your Momma? I thought I raised you better.” She huffed, taking a step towards Mike and glaring at Eddie as he tightened his grip on his sword. “Relax, fish boy, I’m not gonna do anything to you or your little troupe here. I just want to have a conversation with my son.”

No one made a sound or moved an inch. Yzma scoffed.

“Hello? Anybody home? Vacate the premises. This won’t take long.” 

Stan spoke up first. “You’re crazy if you think we’re-”

“It’s okay, guys. Let me talk to her.”

All four boys looked to Mike as if he had two heads.

Richie breathed a sigh and started to herd the others out of the room, and Mike repressed a laugh at what sounded like Eddie saying ‘what is it with you guys’ mothers and barging into my fucking castle?!’.

When it was just the two of them, Yzma smirked and marched her way over to where Eddie had been sitting, pulling out the chair and laying in it with her legs hooked over one arm and her arm draped dramatically over the other. “Mikey, your friends are exhausting, I really have no idea how you put up with them, and coming from someone who was literally in their brains, that means a  _ lot _ .”

“Why did you come here, Mother?”

Yzma groaned loudly, rolling her head over so that she could look at her son and fixing him with a look of utter exasperation. “I obviously just wanted to see my son but since  _ that’s  _ apparently out of the question, I came here with an offer for you. You come back to the Isle with me and I break Richie’s curse. Deal?”

Mike balked at the proposition, not because it was as outlandish as he was anticipating, but because his mother had mentioned breaking the very curse Mike had broken the night before. “You’re lying. Richie isn’t cursed. I broke it, just like I broke Bev’s.” He stood his ground as his mother let out a sound that was more of a cackle than a laugh. 

“You didn’t break  _ shit _ ! You really think that  _ you _ could break one of _ my _ curses without doing exactly what I wanted you to do?!  _ Never! _ ” Yzma stood from the chair and leaned over the table, bracing herself with both hands. “You wanna know what happened?! I let your little golden boy have his mind back, momentarily, he still does, but  _ I’m _ still there! In the back of his mind. And until he does what I have planned for him, there is no way you’re gonna break that curse unless you come with me.”

“But...But Beverly-”

“I put all of your magic into that little fire starter and boy, you wiped her head clean! You really did ruin things for your little friends there, she and the bellringer were so sweet I thought I was going to throw up every time she thought about him. Disgusting.” She flicked her eyes over to Mike again, and the boy felt like nothing more than just that in the moment. A boy. Who had done nothing but hurt his friends and the people he loved. He had tried and he had ruined them. “Now I believe you have a deal to consider. And don’t think about telling your little crew about Richie’s curse, or I kill them all and take Auradon with me.” She smiled at him as if she were addressing a child, as if she hadn’t just threatened him and his friends’ very lives.

But he had no way of knowing what his mother had in store for his family and for Auradon if he left with her. 

“I won’t go with you.” He said finally.

Yzma smirked as if she had won.

“Suit yourself.”

And she was gone in a puff of purple smoke. 

*****

“Wh-Wh-What did sh-she s-s-say to you, Mike?” Bill whispered to Mike that night in their dorm. He had refused to acknowledge the conversation he’d had with Yzma with the rest of their friends, brushing it off as her taunting him for breaking Richie’s curse. A lie. Mike tried not to think about the fact that that was the first time he’d ever lied to them.

“Threatened Auradon...and you guys...asked me to go with her...in return for her breaking Richie’s curse.” Mike’s mind whirred with any way he could twist what he was saying to get it off his chest without breaking Yzma’s terms, “She told me she’d broken Richie’s curse herself when she felt me trying to do it, and all of my magic...all of it went to Bev. That’s why she lost her memory. I was hitting her with the force of two counter-curses.” He said finally, pulling his comforter up slightly so that he could hug it tightly to his chest. He tried to ignore the tears down his cheeks and the shivers coming from Bill and the ways in which they were all so broken swirling around in his head. 

“C-Can I t-t-tell you s-s-something, Mike?” Bill asked, only continuing when Mike looked at him over the puffy blanket, “I don’t think that Stan’s gonna be able to thaw me.”

And for a moment, Mike stopped thinking.

“He d-doesn’t...I’m n-n-not the only o-o-one that h-he l-l-loves and th-that’s...that’s gonna ch-ch-change things, I c-c-can just f-f-feel it. And m-maybe I l-l-l-love someone the s-s-same way I l-l-l-love Stan and wh-wh-what do I d-d-do if all of th-th-that k-k-keeps me s-s-stuck as a b-b-b-block of ice f-f-for the rest of m-my life? What d-d-d-do I do th-th-then?”

Mike tried to ignore the way his chest tightened as he turned over, wishing that they weren’t stuck in a situation that meant relationship drama came with fatal consequences.

“Good night, Bill.” 

  
  



	6. Battle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: This chapter contains graphic descriptions of wounds and death, above all else, keep yourself safe.
> 
> Also, I just want everyone to know that *ahem* wOAHHHHH WE'RE HALFWAY THEREEEEEEE because this fic and this series as a whole is only six chapters from completion! I have loved writing this series so much and also I hope you all don't hate me after this chapter. Enjoy!

Mike couldn’t fight the feeling of being watched now. He knew that the others were off trying to do whatever they could to figure out just when Bill would freeze over, but Mike knew it would be soon. Stan’s magic wasn’t as strong as Elsa’s, but it was still strong in its own right. He was just waiting for someone to burst into the library and tell him that Bill was completely frozen. 

He kept hearing Bill’s words from the night before in his head like a broken record. Who else would Stan love? Who else in the world could even come close to what those two had? And what did it mean for Stan’s ability to thaw Bill when he inevitably froze over? Not only that but what was Mike supposed to do about Richie? Yzma still had him under her control and was, what, lying in wait? The thought made Mike antsy, and it didn’t help that Ben had been M.I.A since Bev got sent back to the Isle.

What had become of them?

One freezing to death.

One having frozen the first.

One unknowingly cursed.

One having to run a kingdom under attack for the first time in decades.

One missing and distraught.

One who forgot them all.

And one the reason for it all. One liar.

The thought made Mike’s eyes begin to well with tears. It was all his fault in the end, wasn’t it? He was the reason Yzma was here. Why hadn’t he just gone with her? Why hadn’t he swallowed his pride and accepted that he couldn’t beat her? His heart supplied answers, but his mind was asking rhetorical questions.

That was when he heard it. The sounds of war outside his window. 

Eddie flung the door of the library wide open, his eyes frantic as he searched for Mike, calling out his name as if he hadn’t already noticed why Eddie was here. 

“We’re under attack, everyone else is getting ready for battle. It’s Yzma. Let’s go!” Eddie called, and Mike followed him to the armory unconsciously, because in his mind he only heard one thing.

This was it. They had passed the point of no return. 

*****

When Mike stepped out into the streets of Auradon, he was met with Stan using what appeared to be all of his strength to keep a shield of thick ice over the residential part of the kingdom proper. The boy whose veins ran cold was actually sweating- so much power being used that fractals of ice were spreading over his hands and beginning their crawl down his forearms- as his ice was attacked from all sides by what Mike could only describe as small meteors. Their origin was exactly what Eddie has said; his mother, hovering in the air with her eyes aglow and her hair whipping to the sides around her as if it itself was alive. Her voice rang out over the kingdom, amplified and ear-splitting as her hands formed a ball of pure, pulsating darkness between them. “There’s my boy! I’ve been waiting for you, Mikey! Let’s see how “strong” you’ve gotten here in Auradon, hmm?”

The darkness she had created was shot down to the ground, where it slid over the grass and flowers like lava until it stopped twenty feet in front of where he and Eddie had just exited. The darkness started to take shape and push itself upward. Mike barely registered the fact that an armored Richie and Bill had joined him and Eddie, and that Stan was now somewhere where he could keep the kingdom covered without being in the throes of battle. The sludge formed seven pillars, each starting to take very obviously, defined forms. Richie turned his head to the side in a moment of confusion. “It’s...us? ...Oh shit, it’s  _ us! _ ” He called out, dodging a bolt of electricity from his own dark clone, “Why the fuck do they have to have _ the curse powers,  _ too?!” Richie and Bill charged into battle the clones, managing to somehow keep the slow, violet-black creatures at bay as Eddie grabbed Mike’s arm to keep him from joining the pair. 

“Mike, you have to face Yzma. It’s the only way we have any chance of winning this. We can handle the clones, but it has to be you who faces her.” Eddie explained quickly, looking over to where Yzma had placed herself on the edge of Auradon, right where the bridge across the divide usually formed. Mike knew Eddie was right. Richie only had healing magic, Bill didn’t have any, and Eddie’s magic was transformational, the only way they would beat his mother was with some magic of equal strength and versatility. It had to be him. Mike had to face her.

He nodded to the king, who immediately ran to help Bill fight off the dark clone of Beverly- who’s water was pairing terrifyingly well with clone-Stan’s ice powers- and dodged the clones to race down to where his mother was waiting for him. 

Yzma was completely still. Eerily so. She lifted her head as she sensed Mike’s presence, and her eyes were still brightly glowing electric blue. “I should’ve known this day would come, Mikey. Someday you’d grow too big for our little Isle, and you’d follow those rotten children anywhere. And for what? Friendship?  _ Love? _ Pathetic. You disappoint me, Michael.” She paused to let out a laugh that sounded utterly inhuman and sent a chill down Mike’s spine, “Now. Now it’s time to show you what real power is.” Mike’s gaze flicked down to her hands, which had started to form small crackles of blue electricity as she spoke, and were now creating quickly-growing spheres of energy in each hand. Somewhere in his heart, Mike knew that this was the moment everything had been building towards and that his next move would decide, now and forever, the fate of Auradon. 

No magic. She was right. He wasn’t strong enough to beat her in a battle of abilities.

But he was smart enough to know that magic wasn’t everything. Not here. Not anywhere. Mike took a breath, watched as his mother pointed her magic right at his heart…

And he jumped towards her.

*****

Eddie felt Richie’s back against his, their swords clashing with equal weapons made of dark energy as they fought against the clones of each other, now the last two bouts of sludge left after they had quickly subdued the Ben, Beverly, and Bill clones. Stan’s clone had taken the man himself to defeat, as Yzma stopped her assault of his ice shield when she had created the clones. 

Stan shot a beam of pure ice at the head of the Eddie clone, which melted immediately at Richie’s feet as Bill sliced through the torso of the Richie clone from behind. The four stopped for a moment, glancing around at what had just occurred. Small patches of sludge still littered the ground, but none of it glowed with the same life that had possessed it during the fight. They had actually  _ won _ in a fight that they were sure to lose. And still, something felt off. A sense of creeping dread that fell on the four like a fog, and chilled the air around them.

“Oh shit! Bill!” Richie called out, see the boy’s feet had become translucent and completely frozen, the ice inching its way up Bill’s body, his legs completely iced over by the time Richie finished speaking. Stan rushed over to Bill, holding him close and pressing their foreheads together as a few tears slipped down his cheeks.

“Bill-”

“Shh, it’s okay. It’ll be okay. Love thaws…” the ice reached Bill’s hands, sticking them in their places on Stan’s shoulder and waist, “love thaws…” his whisper was clipped, the ‘s’ coming out as a final breath of warmth. 

Bill was frozen. 

Stan took a shaky breath and sent every ounce of love he had in his heart through him to connect with the frozen version of Bill, his eyes squeezed tight so he didn’t have to watch as Bill thawed. 

After a moment, he opened his eyes and was met with the worst thing he could have imagined. 

Bill, still trapped in ice, his expression as trusting and accepting as it had been when he froze. 

Eddie curled into Richie’s arms, burying his face in the other boy’s chest to hide his tears.

The wail that ripped through Stan’s throat was heard in every corner of the kingdom. 

*****

Yzma’s hands were pushed downward, and the energy rippled through the ground around her and Mike as he sent her tumbling to the ground, keeping one hand tightly gripped around her wrists to prevent her from using the magic she was the most skilled with. 

“Don’t you get it yet, Mother? This? All of this? This is what makes you a villain. And villains don’t win.” Mike stated plainly, staring down into the now-normal eyes of the woman who was his mother in blood alone. She stared up at him with something that looked almost like a proud smirk, but twisted and cruel.

“If I’m a villain, then so are you. It’s in your blood, in your heart,” she taunted back at him, her eyes flickering back to the glow they’d had before as she spoke, “and you know what they say, Mikey, villains never change.”

“Wrong. I’m not a villain. Never have been. Bill? Bev? Richie? Me?” Mike raised one hand up to hover over Yzma’s heart. He knew what had to be done now. There was only one way to beat the woman who had managed to break through the Isle barrier more times than were necessary to prove that what Mike was planning to do was the only course of action. “We do what has to be done to protect everyone that we can. We put our lives on the line and throw our hands onto blades and we get cursed and we get hurt and we have the things we love taken away from us, and do you know what that makes us?” Mike channeled all of his magic into his palm, and he searched for the magic that resembled his own. The magic that was giving life and youth to someone who should have left the world decades ago. He closed his hand into a fist and felt the magic pull towards his own; felt it pull away from Yzma. “We’re fucking heroes.”

Yzma let out a full-bodied laugh, even as her skin was morphing to show the tests of time and the light behind her eyes started to dim. “You’ve been playing into my hands since the day you were born, and you’re still falling into my plans as if you have any will of your own. You forgot about one thing though, Mikey.” Her head whipped to the side, eyes glowing bright gold. From across the field, Mike watched Richie’s eyes glow the same way as he raised his sword in the hand that wasn’t wrapped around Eddie. 

Mike screamed Eddie’s name a moment too late.

*****

Richie blacked out for a moment, just a moment.

How, in the span of that one moment, did he go from holding the boy he loved to pulling a sword from that same boy’s torso? He heard Mike’s scream, heard Stan gasp and start to sob, heard Yzma’s horrid laugh, but every noise seemed muffled as he looked down at the red that marred his hands and was now starting to bubble up and drip from Eddie’s mouth. 

Richie dropped to his knees, holding Eddie tightly in his arms as the pair went down, tears slipping down his face. Eddie just smiled at Richie the whole time, shock having taken over him as blood started to pool on the ground around the pair, but the smile that was surely meant to ease Richie’s sadness only increased it as Eddie leaned up to cough a bit of blood into his hand. 

“No, no, no, no Eddie, I’m sorry baby I’m sorry I lost...I couldn’t, I’m sorry-”

“Hey, shush, w-wasn’t you. I kn-know it wasn’t, you...you wouldn’t e-ever hu-hurt me, Chee. J-   
Just...sing f-f-for m-me?” Eddie choked out, reaching up to card a hand through Richie’s hair. 

Richie nodded fervently, holding Eddie’s hand in place with one of his own and slowly beginning the healing incantation that he had hoped to never again have to use.

“Flower...Flower gleam and g-glow, let your p-power…” He stopped suddenly, feeling the skin on Eddie’s hand start to harden as he sang. When he pulled the other’s hand away, he pulled in a breath at the sight of Eddie’s skin becoming stone, just as Bill’s had become ice. The lack of incantation caused the stone to quickly fade, but it was clear that any attempts to heal Eddie would end this way. 

“No, no, no, no, I can’t lose you. I can’t, I can’t, I just found you I can’t lose you, Eddie, please no.” 

“Hey Ch-Chee...can you...can you g-get something out of my sh-shirt pocket, please?”

Richie stared down at Eddie in utter disbelief, but still reached into the small pocket that couldn’t actually hold too much, and felt something small and smooth. When he pulled out the piece of sea glass, meticulously carved into a ring with the small inscription “R+E” carved into the side, Richie broke down. 

*****

“What have you  _ done?! _ ” Mike yelled at Yzma, pulling the energy and magic from her much faster now and only slightly enjoying the way she choked on her words in pain at the action. 

“I j-just helped f-f-flower boy b-break his c-c-curse. K-K-Kill the o-one he l-loves m-m-most.”

“No. You’ll never win. You’re going to pay for everything you’ve done to us and everything will be okay you will  _ lose _ . Once and for all.” Yzma coughed out a laugh at that comment, staring right up at Mike as she spoke.

“Michael...you say villains never win...yet here I am. You kill me, you take Golden Boy’s healing power with you...all he will do is turn that poor boy to stone. Your little friends destroyed each other. You’re all going to be...miserable. As far as I can see...I’ve won. Now go p-pick up your broken pieces.” With one last squeeze of his fist, Mike ripped the magic away from Yzma and took her life with him as silent, angry tears rolled down his cheeks. 

*****

“Don’t-Don’t cry y-yet…I haven’t even s-said anything...Richie...if I’m g-g-going to die...or t-turn to stone...I want to b-be your f-fiance when I...when I do. W-Will you-”

“Yes. Yes baby, of course, I will…” Richie sobbed, holding Eddie close to him as he wept.

“Chee...I w-want you to t-t-turn me to st-stone...I w-would rather w-w-wait for you h-here than...than wa-wait wherever c-c-comes next...please…” Eddie begged, and Richie could feel his heartbeat starting to slow down. If he was going to save him in any way, he had to do it now. He laced his fingers with Eddie’s, pushing them up into his hair and whispering the damning incantation as he pulled Eddie to stand. 

As Richie’s voice filled the cold, silent air, Eddie smiled up at him, and Richie tried to ignore the way the lifeless gray crept down Eddie’s arms first, extending to the lower portion of his body before moving back up towards his head. The last thing the king of Auradon would say for decades would be a whispered ‘I love you’ as he turned completely to stone. 

Mike moved up to the pair that remained of their friends, panting as his veins pulsed with new magic and new power. Stan looked to Mike, eyes puffy and clear tear tracks marring his cheeks. 

“What happened?” 

Mike could sum it up in two solemn, devastating words.

“We lost.”

  
  



	7. After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit shorter than usual, but this is more of a set up for what's left of the series than a whole chapter. As always, I hope you enjoy!

The thing about fighting the battle is that they scarcely ever tell you what happens after. Not in detail at least. They don’t tell you about terrifying interrogations or finding places for bodies...statues...loved ones or murder trials.

Shit hit the fan all at once. 

Stan locked himself away almost immediately. Willed himself to feel something, feel anything that could bring back the boy he loved. He didn’t even let Mike in. It was harder now more than ever not to draw comparisons between Stan and Elsa. He had loved Bill truly, wholly, why hadn’t it worked?

Ben was the opposite. He found out about everything that had happened the day after it occurred, launched himself into Mike’s arms, and the two cried. For fallen friends and mistakes they’d made and what-ifs. They cried and wished for everything to be the way it was before. Wished for moments from only days before.

The former king and queen wept for the loss of their son. The kingdom for its king. Richie for the only person he’d ever loved. Melody came home as quickly as she could. She was the queen, and she let herself show the weakness losing her little brother gave her behind closed doors as she and Richie mourned. She listened to him explain everything that had happened, the pain and inability to control his own body. The disgusting feeling of Eddie’s blood on his hands. The way pieces of Yzma stuck in his mind even though he knew she was gone. Melody listened to everything. She listened, even though she knew what the kingdom was crying out for.

Richie’s trial happened two days later. Richie was charged with treason. A life sentence. 

One that would have been given to Mike instead- for keeping his knowledge of Richie’s curse under wraps- if Richie had pleaded cursed as Melody and Lux had advised.

The cell was cold but spacious. The kingdom didn’t have a need for more than one cell. There weren’t any villains in Auradon when the castle was built. Melody ensured that there were a few books in the cell, a desk, a private bathroom, it was nice for a cell. She had done what she could without receiving backlash from the kingdom. The guards told far too many tales for any accommodations not to be known to the entire kingdom. It was somewhere someone would spend a lifetime.

Richie tried to ignore the way that his knees stung as they collided with the harsh stone floor, the cell door shutting and locking with a click that sealed his fate and carried the weight of what had happened. One guard stayed, the other left without another word, Richie saw only now, as one of the twins stared into the cell but not at him, that they were Lottie’s sons. He had spoken with them not two weeks ago about the details of their mother’s birthday party that was being held in the Auradonian Botanical Gardens. He hadn’t known they were part of the guard.

The guard that hadn’t been necessary until now. 

Richie stood, walked to his bed, sat, and felt the gravity of the last week settle onto his shoulders.

He thought of Ben, the loneliest boy in the world who fell in with them as if it were natural. Fell into friendships and fell into the kind of love you only find once. Fell to tears as the one who loved him most was dragged to the Isle.

He thought of Stan, whose blood ran cold and who created pillows of snow for strangers on instinct. Who caught two of them, unknowingly of course, whose magic slipped through his fingers and into the heart of one of their own. The only one to break a curse the right way.

He thought of Bill, who fell into more than snow on that day. Who lived and froze for his little brother. Who, even as ice crept into his lungs and throat, fought with every fiber of his being to save them all. Who never got to spend a day with his family now on the side of the world in which they belonged.

He thought of Bev, who now thought of nothing at all. The girl who sought a prince and found a bellringer. Who held him while he cried and whose heart burned the brightest of all of them, whose soul, he prayed, would win over magic. 

He thought of Mike, who carried a similar weight as he did now, who had lost everyone so swiftly, who was the last VK standing. Who spent summers in libraries and had more magic within him than any other being. Mike, who was left to pick up the broken pieces. 

He thought of Eddie. Eddie. Prince Eddie, King Eddie, Eddie my love, Eds. Eddie, whose ring of sea glass and pure, unadulterated love, laid on his finger right where it belonged. Eddie who was dying and chose to wait for Richie in pain and stone instead of slipping into the warmth of the next life. Eddie, who he loved and lived for.

He thought of them. Of the seven of them, together.

And time slipped through his fingers like tears down cheeks and friends from this life. 

He thought of them before it happened. Before pain and anguish and choices they shouldn’t have to make.

He kept thinking for almost three decades.

  
  



	8. Time

Time, Mike decided, is everyone’s worst enemy.

He made this decision ten years ago, watching Richie pick at the dinners he brought him in silence. No jokes, no smiles, not even the flicker of light that his friend had always brought to the room. Richie was a blank slate. 

It had been twenty-seven years since the Battle for Auradon. Twenty-seven years since Bill had been frozen over, since Eddie had turned to stone, since Richie had been thrown in prison, since they lost everything. A lot changes in twenty-seven years.

They changed. So much.

“Eddie changed again,” Mike whispered, leaning up against the cold metal bars of the cell. He enjoyed these days, the days when he could just sit with Richie and talk without the guards around. Richie was the only one left who understood, anyway.

Richie made a sound of acknowledgment, not daring to meet Mike’s eyes. 

“He’s older again. Looks our age. Still looks like him though.” Another sound. Mike told Richie this about once a year, when, overnight, the stone that kept Eddie alive shifted. Either a new pose, or evidence of age, or a different expression. Yearly proof that the king lived on in his stone prison. Mike couldn’t exactly say the same of the king’s fiance. 

“Richie...do you want to try again? We can-” 

“No.” Richie answered finally, and Mike breathed a sigh as he heard the familiar scrape of Richie’s blunt pen against the wall.

“Are you going to do that every time I ask?” Mike muttered under his breath, hoping not to be heard over the scraping. He didn’t even dare to look over his shoulder at the scrapes now, he knew what the walls looked like, so marred and striped that concrete looked like wallpaper, lighter in color in some marks than others depending on just how angry Richie had been at Mike’s question.

“Are you going to keep asking the impossible of me?”

“Richie, it’s not impossible. If you’d just look at my not-”

Mike shielded his eyes as shards of glass rained from above his head, through the bars as they did roughly every thirty times he asked, when Richie got even more angry and existential. When he thought too much of Eddie and of the day that Auradonians didn’t dare speak of. It was hard, seeing Richie like this, seeing the once light and loving boy turned to a cold and distant shell of a man who spent too long thinking about the lives that he couldn’t change now. 

“I don’t want to look at your damn notes, Mike!” Richie screamed after the glass had shattered and its remnants lay scattered on the floor. “He’s gone! He’s fucking  _ dead _ ! Don’t you get it?! I killed him! I killed Eddie and Bill is frozen and Bev doesn’t remember us and everything is _ shit _ and it’s never going to get any better!” Richie swiped all of his belongings off of the desk that was in the cell. Books with dented spines and creased pages, crumpled bits of parchment Mike knew were once letters Richie had tried to write to Eddie as if the stone that once was king would read them, empty inkwells that hadn’t yet been thrown at the bars with deadly aim. He had done this before, too, and would pick each item up with reverence the moment that Mike left. He would cry while reassembling the only thing he had control over in the cell. 

A steady silence fell over the pair after that. Mike drew in a breath and decided to do something he probably should’ve done long ago.

“Do you want to know about them?”

Richie’s breathing slowed from the erratic tempo it had taken up in his fit of anger, and for the first time in a decade, Richie looked at Mike and saw what years of being the last VK in Auradon had done to him. 

His face had lost all of the softness of childhood, replaced with hard lines and sharp structure of age. That was the smallest of the changes, though. Mike had once mentioned that Yzma’s magic would overtake his body one day, and it had seemed that the transformation had started sometime after Richie stopped looking at Mike through the bars. 

Electric blue light radiated from his left eye like it was alive, bright, and vibrant. The light crackled down into his cheek and brow ridge, and it would almost be beautiful if it didn’t look so painful. Richie realized he was staring a moment too late.

“Sorry...what was the question?” Richie asked dumbly, taking a step towards Mike, close enough to reach out and touch the bars. 

“Do you want to know about them? What’s left of us, at least.” Mike asked again, smiling a little too tightly. “The Losers.”

Richie stared at Mike and thought, for the first time, that he hadn’t even asked about the rest of them. He hadn’t thought about the others that they had left behind.

“Please...please, I-I wanna know everything. Every detail.” He turned quickly, grabbing the wooden desk chair, and sliding it into place in front of the bars, smiling as Mike turned his chair that had been brought down for him years ago so that he was facing Richie as well. 

“The biggest news first, then. Ben and Bev,” Mike paused for a moment at Richie’s look of shock at hearing the pair’s names together again, “Beverly came back to us fifteen...sixteen years ago. Ben had been visiting her for years on the Isle, ever since Auradon came back to life after the war restoration project. Apparently, our very own Queen Melody had given him a full shell’s worth of the enchanted water from Atlantica that had turned them all into mermaids before. He went and saw her every day to try to kick start her memories...turns out he just made her fall in love with him all over again. Oh, and you probably wouldn’t recognize Ben if you saw him, apparently swimming the divide twice a day is quite the workout.” 

Mike couldn’t help his smile as he told the story, ignoring the pain in favor of reliving the sweet memories that he had of their group, of the way Beverly had lit up when she saw him and hugged him tightly, her memories seemingly still attached to Mike and Yzma’s magic and therefore making it easier to remember Mike than the other Losers. He noticed that Richie was smiling, too, soft tears starting their descent down his cheeks at the prospect of his best friend getting her happy ending even after the damage the war had done.

“They’re uh, married now, by the way. Ben and Bev. Two and a half kids. Literally, the third is on the way so...half.”

“They have kids? What...What’re their names?” 

“The twins are Willa and Edeline. They’re nine.”

Richie’s smile dropped. “They named them after-”

“Yeah...they did. The uh...the third one is supposed to be named uh...Rachel, if it’s a girl…”

“And if it’s a boy?”

“Richard.”

Richie’s face contorted into an expression of confusion, and his gaze broke away from Mike’s for a moment, moving to the floor and darting side to side slightly as he pondered just how what Mike had said was even possible. “She doesn’t know me, Mike.” He decided on, lifting his head to meet his friend’s eyes. 

“She’s been getting the memories back, spending so much time with us has helped. She knows that the name is important to her...that the person is important to her. She doesn’t remember Bill yet...or Eddie. When she does, we’ll...we’ll bring her down. The memories they’re...they’re hard on her. Physically pain her to remember. ‘Cause of the way I…” Mike explained, scrubbing a hand over his face as he thought back to the day he had tried to save his friends and failed.

“It’s not your fault.” Richie countered, only to be met with the same brush-off noise he had given Mike before. When it was clear that neither one of them wished to speak further on the topic, both still wrestling with their guilt even decades late, Richie spoke up. “What about the others? How’s Stan and…” Richie trailed off, realizing terribly that Stan  _ was _ the only other one. They were here, and Richie had heard bits of information about Mike’s life over the years to be able to piece together the fact that Mike was the Head Magic Expert of Auradon now, that over the years he became the only person who Melody trusted with the investigation into her brother’s condition, especially after the former king and queen’s passing. If Richie had to guess, he would say that Mike likely also took up the position of Head Royal Advisor by just how much he talks about speaking with Melody, whose schedule, Richie knows, is far too full for so many friendly chats unless they were with a member of the advisory board. 

“He’s alright. He hasn’t used his ice since that night. He goes and sees Bill every day and I...I give him his space.”

“Are you two together yet or are you still pretending that the three of you didn’t love each other?” Richie asked plainly, and Mike stopped to stare open-mouthed at the first smile he’d seen from his friend in decades, then processed exactly what had caused it and felt the heat rise to his cheeks.

“No, we’re not together! He’s literally trying to keep as much of his heart on Bill as he can. He thinks that he didn’t love him enough to thaw him. Bill thought the same, or at least that’s what he told me.” Richie smirked at Mike’s answer, lips curling up in a way that scared Mike considering that it was the same look Richie got when someone-

“So you admit part of Stan’s heart is reserved for you?” 

“ _ No. _ ”

“Mhmm, and I’m gonna pretend to believe that. Unfortunately, Micycle, our time for today is up, so get out of this depressing ass place.” Richie said finally, rising from his chair and moving to place it back in front of his desk. “Oh, and you better bring pictures of the twins tomorrow, and tell Stan I said ‘hi’!”

“Will do, Trashmouth!” Mike called over his shoulder as he ascended the staircase which separated Richie from the rest of the world.

It had become a routine, after visiting Richie, that Mike would stop by the royal gardens to visit with Eddie.

Mike had been telling the truth, Eddie was getting older. Just like he did on the same night every year. Further proof that Eddie was still alive and well despite his statuesque appearance. Since the war, Eddie had grown a few inches. Not too much though, he would still be the shortest of their group now, but taller nonetheless. He, like the rest of them, had lost the roundness of youth from his face, and his eyes always looked up to the sky like he was searching for something. His clothes always changed with him, too, and he had lost the armor of the war after the first year, wearing some form of his royal attire every year since then. Typical Eddie, always keeping up appearances even made of stone. 

Mike didn’t have the heart to tell Richie the worst part. How Eddie was cracking. Thin, dark lines scoured over his hands and chest and one right across his cheek. He didn’t know how long Eddie had left before he started to break. 

“Hey, buddy. Me again.” Mike muttered, taking his usual seat on the platform on which Eddie had been placed decades ago. “Richie misses you. As usual. He uh...threw an ink well at me today. At least he’s not ignoring me anymore.” Mike sighed, leaning back slightly against Eddie’s leg. 

“I’m gonna bring you back, Eddie. Just hold on a little longer.”


	9. Rebirth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so so so sorry for how long this chapter took. Between finals, the holidays, and coming back to my college campus, this fic seemed to just get lost in it all. I'm going to try to wrap this series up as strongly as I can! 
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me : )

“I can’t do that, Mike.” 

“Yes you can, you’re the  _ queen _ , Mel. You can do quite literally anything you want.” Mike called out, chasing after Melody down the long corridor. 

“I’m not pardoning Richie no matter how much y-”

“Twenty-seven years.”

Melody stopped in her tracks and whirled around to face Mike, a fire in her eyes that burned hotter than even Hades’ hair could burn. “Don’t you  _ dare _ speak to me as if I don’t know how long it’s been. I  _ know  _ that my baby brother has been a fucking  _ statue _ for almost three decades! I  _ know _ that the man I believed was going to be my brother-in-law is now  _ rotting _ in a cell and that the boy he was is long dead. I  _ know _ that the Isle Initiative failed and that Eddie will go down in history as a failure because of it. I know everything about this situation, Mike. I’m the fucking queen. I am burdened with more knowledge than you can ever imagine, and I am burdened with it after being promised I was free from its weight.” 

There was a moment, tense and unwavering, when the two locked eyes and the world seemed to still under the gravity they had created.

“I’m going to die.” 

Melody’s harsh stare broke, slipping into one of saddened confusion at the sudden statement from the man who had become her closest friend in the years since the Battle for Auradon.

“We’re all going to die, Mike. We’re not kids anymore, we’re getting old and-”

“I am going to die soon. Within the next three years, I imagine,” When he received no response, Mike elected to continue, “The magic is...it’s eating away at me, Mel. This much energy was never meant to be contained in one person...it’s going to kill me. I can’t...I can’t leave this world with Eddie still stone and Bill still frozen. I can’t go out as a failure, Melody.” Mike murmured, taking a moment to breathe a sigh before explaining himself further, “I believe that I can give Richie his powers back...if I can, then I think he will be able to bring Eddie back to us.”

Melody’s confusion had quickly shifted to a solemn sort of understanding, it was the expression she used when making decisions for the kingdom as to not betray her emotions. Mike decided not to comment on how similar to Eric and Eddie the look made her appear. She wore it throughout Mike’s spiel, and still even now. 

“What’s your plan?” She asked softly, holding out her hand for the notebook Mike had been attempting to give her ever since he had met up with her in the hallway. Mike hesitated for a moment, startled by Melody’s willingness to discuss Mike’s theory that they both knew was flimsy at best. 

“Right, uh, here’s my notes. We should probably discuss this in private, though, it wouldn’t be good for the word to get out about this before we even make a decision.” Mike suggested, tipping his head towards Melody’s discussion room which, fortunately, was located nearer to the end of the hallway that they were in. 

Melody nodded and started off towards the room, leaving Mike standing in disbelief. He smiled to himself, hopeful for the first time in years, and followed after her. 

*****

Richie didn’t intend to be woken up early that day. Hell, most of the time, no one bothered him all day, he woke up after what he assumed was noon, Mike came down for dinner, and he continued to wallow in self-pity and miss Eddie. Today wasn’t like every other day, though. 

“Richie, wake up!” Richie vaguely recognized the voice of Landon La Bouff, deeper now than the last time he’d heard it thirty years ago, but still tipped with the same accent as his mother. He groaned at the prospect of leaving his bed and pulled his pillow over his head.

“Leave me alone, Lanny, I’m exhausted!” He called back to the guard, rolling over to his side to face the cold cell wall.

“Get your ass up or we’ll haul it out, you’re being pardoned.” 

Richie stilled. Slowly, he sat up in his bed and looked out at Landon, tears starting to well in his eyes at what he had said. “I’m...I’m getting out? For real?” 

“For real. Now move it, you have an audience with the queen and one of her advisors.” 

Richie nodded, jumped up from his bed, and looked up to Landon with the brightest smile he’d worn in years. He quickly pulled on an outfit that didn’t look like he’d been living in a cell for twenty-seven years and walked to the front of the space, waiting for Landon to open the door. 

The door rattled as it was slid open, and Richie glanced down to where the floor had discolored from years of that very door being shut tight for so long. 

He took three steps. Three steps to get out. When the door rattled again behind him, Richie let out a shaky breath of relief.

He was free. 

*****

“I can’t believe it, Mike...twenty-seven years, and I’m...I’m going to get him back,” Melody muttered, smiling over to Mike as the two organized the plan for reviving not only Eddie but Bill as well. They had been the key to each other’s salvation, as it turned out, and Mike truly couldn’t be any prouder of himself and of the details of a magical transaction decades in the making.

The door creaked open behind them slowly, and Mike heard Melody’s breath hitch from beside him as a tall figure entered. It was obvious that the figure had taken some time with their appearance, looking nothing like how they had when Mike had visited the day prior. Unruly black curls had been trimmed to a length similar to their original state, the cheeks and chin that once were home to a shadow of a beard- left to grow by a state of complacency- were now clear, and eyes that had been clouded by storms had, by some unknown cause, brightened to those of a boy who had been presumed dead. There was a flash of movement, and suddenly Melody crashed into the newest addition to the room, her ruffled dress wrapping around him almost as tightly as her arms did.

*****

“Rich...I’m so sorry…” Melody whispered to him, and as much as he wanted to assuage her sadness, Richie found that his airway was being slightly impaired by her embrace.

“Mel...can’t breathe-”

“Oh! Sorry.” The queen chuckled, reaching up with a gloved hand to wipe tears from her eyes, “I got excited.”

There was a moment where neither was willing to make a move, too afraid that whatever they’d do would cross an unspoken line or falsely portray their true emotions. 

Richie took the first step, smiling down at Melody and drawing her in for a hug that rivalled her own. She hesitated, but returned the gesture, “I missed you, Mel…”

“I missed you, too…”

Mike cleared his throat from across the room, and the pair finally separated to join him. When the trio had gathered around the table at the room’s center, Richie looked to Mike.

“So...I think I’m ready to look at those notes of yours.” 

  
  



	10. Resurgence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so so so so sorry for the long wait for this chapter, but this story is quickly coming to a close, there actually won't be much after this!
> 
> I'd also like to dedicate this chapter to @hannahisodd on Insta, because this chapter was sitting in my Google Docs for approximately a long ass time and their AMAZING fanart for this fic motivated me to finally finish it! Thank you Hannah!

“You have it? After all this time, you’ve had it all along?”

“Yes. Yzma took it away when she started to take over your minds. It’s why your eyes glowed yellow for so long before anything happened but Bev and Bill didn’t experience the same phenomenon. She replaced the sundrop’s magic with her own, which is why Eddie,” Richie flinched, “well, you know. I will say, there’s not much left of the sundrop’s magic, though. Yzma’s powers are...all consuming. It’s why she said that killing her would mean you would never have your powers again,” Mike caught Richie’s expression starting to dim and quickly started to speak again, “but...there’s enough left to heal Eddie. Watch,”

Mike held out his hands ever so slightly in front of him, one laid gently on top of the other. He softly whispered the healing incantation that he had studied in Rapunzel’s story, and the moment that he started, small tendrils of bright golden magic started to move from his hands, extending upwards and leaning towards Richie as if they were reaching out for him. Mike stopped the incantation before it could be finished and curled his hands into fists, dropping them to his sides.

“I can’t use the magic myself. It never belonged to Yzma and it definitely doesn’t belong to me. Magic chooses its user and it only knows you.” Mike explained, looking up to Richie, who had yet to say anything on the matter. Melody had heard every detail of Mike’s plan before, and elected to stay silent during the exchange, knowing it had been...a lot, hearing that there was an actual chance to save Eddie. 

“If you can’t use it, why does it matter at all? You said you had a plan, this just sounds like an obstacle.” Richie muttered, his eyes never leaving Mike’s.

“I can’t use it, but I can give it back.”

“Give it back? As in...back to me?” Mike nodded, and Richie’s eyes widened, his chest starting to rise and fall much faster than it had been previously as his breathing grew more erratic, “Give it back then, Mike, we need to end this.” He reached out a hand to the magician, and Mike readily grabbed onto the hand he offered, squeezing his eyes shut and singing the incantation in a low voice. A light glow radiated out from between their clasped hands, and Richie gasped at the feeling of magic winding through his body again.

It felt like electricity and heat, not the sort of electricity that zaps and harms but the low, humming noise telling you that something that was once still is now coming to life. It was warm, as if it was living beneath Richie’s skin and wrapping around him like the warmth of a nearby fire or the arms of an old friend. More than anything, the magic felt like life itself. The concept made Richie question, did all magic feel like this? Did the magic that ate away at Mike’s soul and left him half-blind still feel miraculous and beautiful as it killed him or was it only healing magic like his own that caused this warmth? The thought of leaving Mike without the life to comfort him in the darkness felt almost wrong. 

And suddenly it was over. The light between their hands faded as Richie magic was finally his own again and Mike’s eyes opened to give Richie a pained expression of happiness, inadvertently confirming Richie’s theory about the pain of darker magic.

“Mike...thank you. Thank you.” Richie wrapped Mike up in a quick hug, then sped off out of the room and, undoubtedly, towards the garden where he knew Eddie now lived. Mike chose not to mention his unruly golden blonde roots had returned with his magic. 

The sounds of Richie’s footsteps faded, and Melody spoke up. 

“How is it that I will be forced to celebrate the return of my brother and the loss of my best friend all at once?”

“I will try as hard as I can, Mel...but if I leave this world with both of them alive, I will have succeeded. I have to go...speak to Stan now...I’m afraid that’s all the bravery I have in me now. If I find any more, I’ll save it for you.” With that, Mike was gone, and Melody fell into a chair at the table with her head in her hands, trying to ignore the way that her palms caught droplets she wished wouldn’t fall. Whether they were from joy or pain, she couldn’t tell. 

*****

When Richie rounded the corner into the garden, he breathed out a gasp. 

Even in stone, the years had been kind to Eddie. His forehead was carved with lines that betrayed the emotions he must have still felt in the prison of Richie’s design. He looked so serious, eyes focused off over the castle garden’s hedge wall and posed with his hands clasped behind his back. Mike had told him that Eddie had changed over the years, and yet somehow Richie had expected to find the love of his life still on his knees with a hand reached up to just where his cheek would have been. 

But he was here. He was here, and he was so beautiful, and this was the end of all of their pain. A small part of Richie wondered if Eddie would think the same of him when he was himself again. If he would see beauty in Richie still, even though he was barely the boy that Eddie had loved so long ago. Richie feared for the state of his heart if Eddie rejected him now. 

Slowly, Richie moved towards the statue, placing his hand gently on Eddie’s arm and sighing at the chill that emanated from him. His lips parted, and he began to sing a song that had both saved and doomed this very man before. He closed his eyes, unable to look just in case it failed. 

“Flower, gleam and glow...let your power shine...make the clock reverse...bring back what once was mine…” Richie felt the stone under his fingers melt away into fine fabric and his breath hitched, “heal what has been hurt, change the fate’s design...save what has been lost...bring back what once was mine, what once was mine.”

There was a moment, after the incantation, where Richie thought he had imagined the soft feeling of a sleeve under his hand, that the incantation hadn’t worked and that all that was left for him was a life back in the-

“Richie?” 

Richie’s eyes shot open at the voice, and he stared up in wonder at the man on the pedestal, who used Richie’s hand to balance himself as he stepped down from it.

“Wow…” Eddie started, smiling up at Richie and placing one had on his cheek, his fingers just barely brushing against Richie’s hair, “you look like shit, Chee.” Without wasting another moment, Eddie pulled Richie into a kiss, smiling into it as Richie’s arms wrapped around his waist and pulled Eddie flush against him. When they broke apart, Richie leaned down to bury his face in Eddie’s neck, holding him as tightly as he could. 

“You’re such an asshole...I love you so much.” 

“Oh my god do  _ not _ get your snot on me I have no idea where you’ve been the last thirty years-”

“You literally just made out with me so you definitely already have my germs-”

“Put me back in the statue I’m done, absolutely not, I don’t deserve this harassment-” Eddie moved towards the pedestal, only to be pulled right back into Richie’s arms.

“Shut up, you love me.”

“...I do. I do love you,” Eddie murmured, pulling slightly away from Richie to look him in the eyes, “I’ve missed you so much…” the happiness in Eddie’s eyes faded away slightly as his gaze flickered away from Richie’s, “you never came to see me…” 

“You could see?” Richie asked in disbelief, guilt heavy in his voice as his thumb traced over Eddie’s cheekbone.

“See, but not hear. It was just...silent. Mike came to see me every day, Melody every once in a while, Stan only once. Never you, though. Not even once. Why? Why did you just...leave me alone? Did you not want me anymore once I wasn’t ther-”

“Never. Ever. Say that I didn’t want you. I...a lot happened, after you turned to stone...a lot of stuff that takes a lot of time to explain.” Richie dipped his head, eyes not meeting Eddie’s as he put space between them, their hands now the only things that connected between them.

“Tell me. We have the time.”

*****

Mike took a deep breath, thinking to himself that a door had never been so terrifying. He had faced his friends, his own mother, even his own imminent demise, but this was the scariest thing he had ever done. He raised his fist, and listened to the hollow sound as he knocked on the wood of the door.

“Go away.” Came the voice from inside, not even questioning who was on the other side of the door. 

“Stan...please open the door.” There was a moment of silence, and then...

“I told you never to talk to me again.” Stan’s voice was louder now, meaning he had advanced towards the door, which Mike internally celebrated, as it was the furthest he had gotten to actually having a conversation with Stan since the Battle for Auradon. 

“We need to talk...and I don’t want to do that through a door.”

Mike waited, and after a minute, when it seemed as though his attempt had failed, he heard a click, a lock finally coming undone. The door creaked open, and standing in the doorway was someone Mike almost didn’t recognize. 

They hadn’t spoken in years, ever since Stan left Auradon proper for his former home in Arendelle. He looked like he hadn’t slept in years, but he still had an aura about him that was so distinctly Stan. 

“You have five minutes before I call the guards.” Stan instructed, levelling Mike with a look that instilled a faith in Mike that Stan would, in fact, call the guards to have him sent away. 

“I finally figured it out...getting Bill out,” he watched Stan’s eye slip into a more distant look. It was far too similar to the one he had seen on Richie for comfort, “it wasn’t your fault, Stan. It was never your fault.”

“What...What’re you talking about, Mike? It... _ I put him in there, Mike _ !” Mike opened his mouth to interject, but was quickly shut down, “ _ No! _ You’ve said enough! You don’t know what it felt like! No one blamed you for Richie, or Eddie, or Bill. Hell, no one even blamed you for  _ Bev _ , and you took her  _ fucking _ memories away! You have no idea what it was like to be the kid who froze his boyfriend then didn’t love him enough to thaw him! You have no idea what it was like to have Georgie look you in the eyes and tell you that you were the one who killed his big brother! You. Don’t. Know! We gave you a pass and blamed your mom and now you just get to waltz in here and play hero?! You’re not a hero, Mike, you never were, you’re a fucking  _ villain _ !” A small cloud had appeared above Stan’s head, and was flurrying at an increasingly alarming rate as he continued spewing thoughts that Mike had already wrestled with more than once since they had last spoken. 

“You’re right.”

The snowflakes stilled. 

“I’m...right?”

“You are. I’m the reason everything happened. Yzma came to Auradon for me and took out everyone I loved in the process. She broke us, but it was all because of me. I think about that fact every time I see the divide and think about how much warmer it would be than the life I’m living. I lost you and Bill. I lost the VKs. I lost the battle. It’s my fault, but I’d rather die than give up hope that I can fix what my mother broke.” Mike’s voice never wavered, and his expression never shifted from the steady, determined look that shone in his eyes. 

Stan stared him down with a rival look, just as strong and hallowed from years of pain not unlike Mike’s own. 

“You mentioned...you have a way to get Bill out?”

Mike cracked a smile. 

“We’re gonna have to get back to Auradon first.”


	11. The End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Finale of the Heart of Villainy

It was absolutely freezing in the storage room that held Bill. Chilling, down to the bone. Mike could see his breath with each exhalation, and took envious note of the fact that Stan’s was not causing the same effect, and how he seemed perfectly at home in the frigid temperature. 

“Are you ready?” Mike asked, smiling over at Stan. They had been there for five minutes now, and Mike had decided to let Stan have a moment to fully understand what was about to happen. It had been decades since Stan had been in this room. Decades since he’d seen Bill at all. He needed a moment, and Mike was decidedly willing to give it, but now it was time to end this. 

Stan shook his head as if he were pulling himself back into the moment, and nodded without ever taking his eyes off of Bill. Mike smiled, taking in the sight of the man beside him, and couldn’t help but feel so incredibly grateful that he was able to see this story come to an end as he took Stan’s hand in his own. He gently placed his other hand onto Bill’s shoulder, and watched as Stan did the same. Stan took a deep breath, letting his eyes fall shut, and Mike let the magic that constantly threatened to overwhelm him pulse forward into the ice under his fingers.

Not too long ago, Mike had discovered that Bill was only stuck in his frozen state because of Yzma’s curses. She had assumed that Stan would comply with Bill’s curse, and had placed extra measures onto Bill to ensure that all of Stan’s love, no matter how strong, would never thaw him. But, with Yzma’s powers now under Mike’s control, he had the ability to circumvent these measures and allow Stan to thaw Bill. 

Mike had also pointedly ignored the part of his mind which told him about the other measures that his mother had created, the ones that would be fulfilled by Mike’s presence anyway. It was better not to build hope before the end.

As the ice melted away into nothing, Mike let yet another surge of Yzma’s magic move into Bill. After all these years, Bill hadn’t grown in the ice. It was as if his life had been paused while he was frozen. As Mike had come to discover, Bill’s inability to grow alongside them was actually very unusual, as Elsa had written several books on ice magic, and each one had described that something living while frozen would continue to grow as normal. Yet Bill hadn’t.

Mike had, instead, felt the presence of a life force within his mother’s magic. For twenty-five years he had believed that it was his mother’s, but now, as it pulled itself out of him, drawn to where Mike’s body met Bill’s, Mike understood. His mother had been extremely detailed in her curse, had wanted his friends to suffer as much as possible, and so, at the moment Stan froze Bill, she had stolen his life energy. Bill’s life was put on hold, and even if Stan had been able to thaw him before, Bill would not have had the energy to breathe much less the energy to live. 

Bill became surrounded in a blue light, and Mike could feel his hand be pushed upwards on Bill’s shoulder as three decades caught up to him all at once. Mike smiled, even though having the extra life energy ripped from his body hurt more than he could describe. Bill was going to be free and happy and this nightmare that he had been living would be over. 

The light dimmed, revealing a man before them, and Mike vaguely registered the short gasp Stan breathed. Stealing a glance over at him, he felt his smile tugging at his lips again, seeing Stan happy was one of the greatest sights in the world, and the opportunity to see his best friend again lit Mike’s heart up as bright as the light that had wrapped around Bill. 

Mike had almost forgotten how it felt, to be at peace again. No more guilt tearing at his soul or weighing him down like it had before. Instead, however, a new feeling had enveloped him. He felt empty, like a part of him had been taken. It ached, but it was comforting at the same time. Warm, almost, and soft. Slowly, Mike let his eyes start to fall shut, and felt pride in his heart as he heard a familiar yet different voice murmur two words.

“...Frost? Mike!”

The warmth wrapped around him tighter, and Mike knew he had succeeded. 

*****

It was dark, when Mike blinked his eyes back open again. Not the kind of darkness that is caused by night or shadow, but an endless sort of darkness that, even though nothing could be seen, clearly went on forever.

Somehow, he didn’t feel scared at all. As if he had been in this darkness forever. There were noises coming from all around him, voices, he could tell, hidden in the staticky sounds.

“-mething’s h-happened.”

“-ill, you’re okay?!”

“-would have c-come sooner, if I c-could.”

“I know.”

“-en did you remember?”

“Not too long ago.”

‘Of course it wasn’t long ago, Bev,’ Mike thought, listening to the love in her voice that she clearly held for everyone in the room, ‘you remembered because I’m gone. The spell is dead, it died with me.’ 

There was another jumble of voices, the conversation with who he could now make out to be Beverly, Bill, and Stan being traded with a conversation that felt more like an intrusion. 

“-at do you mean he’s gone?”

‘Oh Mel…’

“I’m sorry…”

“-ike...he’s gon-”

The voices fell away, replaced by three sets of choked back sobs. Mike felt horribly, leaving Eddie to deliver the worst news you can give so soon after being revived. His heart wrenched as he registered Melody’s screaming cry, followed softly by the consoling voice of Lux, who was no doubt putting on the same brave face she had worn during Richie’s trial in order to comfort her wife. 

What broke his heart was hearing Richie cry. He had been so strong for so many years, and part of Mike knew that it was a testament to their friendship that Richie cried for him. That he felt so deeply that he passed the anger he usually showed in place of sadness and let the tears fall. 

Somewhere in the void that Mike had found himself in, there came a voice. Clearer than all the rest, and from no particular point in the darkness. In fact, part of Mike knew that the voice was echoing from inside his head, asking of him “are you ready,” and Mike found himself answering.

‘I’m ready.’

Mike closed his eyes again, took a deep breath, and let himself rest.

*****

Auradon celebrated the return of their king, no longer a king at all, and mourned the loss of their kingdom’s greatest magical expert and kindest soul. 

Melody refused Eddie’s numerous offers to take the weight of the crown off of her shoulders. She knew that it was where she had been meant to be all along now, and the kingdom needed stability now more than ever.

Eddie and Richie tried to slip away as quietly as they could, deciding to travel throughout Auradon’s former kingdoms to find a place to settle down. Supposedly, only two people know where they are now, a woman with hair like fire and a man with ice in his veins. 

Ben and Beverly live happily in Auradon, where they continue to raise their children- Willa, Edeline, and Michael- will Bev’s memories complete once more.

Stan and Bill spend their days in former Arendelle with Georgie, where Stan works to regain his powers with the help of an extensive collection of novels covered in annotations from a certain magic wielder. Annotations that told him the only reason that Bill had actually been thawed was because Mike had loved them just as much. 

When Melody finally worked up the nerve to go into Mike’s room for the first time since his passing, she found the room unnaturally spotless, the only thing out of place being a large leatherbound book with small golden accents sitting on his bed. On top of it, a large piece of paper covered in Mike’s quick, messy handwriting. Melody picked up the paper, and read it off.

‘Hi Melody,

Yes, I know it’s you, no one else would try to come in here. Hell, no one else even knows this is my room. 

I’m sorry I never told you about the plan, or about knowing what bringing Eddie and Bill back would do to me. I figured it out a long time ago, that Yzma’s power destroyed mine. All that was left was the power she stole from Richie and just enough power to cover every inch of what Yzma did to Bill. It’s why I was so adamant about letting Richie out now. There wouldn’t be a second chance after this if I failed.

The book you found with this letter contains a complete history of everything that led to this. From the very moment the VKs were told they were coming to Auradon to the curses that caused our pain to finally finding to plan to break them. It’s all here. Don’t let anyone tell this story differently. Don’t let them paint us as villains. 

I’m so sorry to leave you behind. But I know that you will continue to be the best queen Auradon has ever seen. 

Tell the losers I love them.

Thanks for being there for me, Mel.

Love,

Mike’

Melody felt the hot tears as they started to stream down her face, looking down at the book that said everything Mike never would, everything that had happened that took her brother away, made her queen, and then killed her best friend. Everything. Laying in her hands. 

She sat on the bed and opened to the first page.

‘ Eddie wouldn’t be king for five days, but of one thing he was certain already, he would give the kids trapped on the Isle of the Lost a chance to live the lives they deserve even if it killed him…’

*****

The story of the children of the Isle of the Lost is not a happy one.

It has no happy ending wrapped in red ribbon, waiting to be retold time and time again. 

The story of the children of the Isle of the Lost is one that changed Auradon forever. 

It’s a story of curses and lost family and frozen hearts and pain.

It’s a story of true love in all its forms.

It’s the story of the losers. 

And they will tell it again and again. 

Until they are only memories. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy heck I can't believe it's been over a year since I started this story and I can't believe it's over. Thank you to everyone who's stayed with this series since Villains Never Change, your encouragement means more than you know.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Reach out to me on Instagram @silentmusiic to talk about Descendants, IT, or literally anything else, I would love to hear what you thought of this series!


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